TAYLOR, John II (by 1533-68), of Burton-upon-Trent, Staffs.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Apr. 1554

Family and Education

b. by 1533. m. (1) by 1554, Alice; (2) settlement 1 Oct. 1567, Helen, da. of Ralph Okeover of Okeover, by Maud, da. of Sir William Bassett of Blore, Staffs. and Meynell Langley, Derbys., 1da.1

Offices Held

Escheator, Staffs. 1555-6; commr. i.p.m. Francis Meverell 1566.2

Biography

John Taylor, gentleman, had many namesakes in Staffordshire and elsewhere. Among them were the yeoman of the chamber who died not long after his appointment in June 1564 as woodward of Iverley wood, Staffordshire; the messenger of the receipt of the Exchequer appointed to that office in May 1545 and reappointed to it in survivorship with his son in July 1555; the translator of Valerius Maximus who was born in 1536 at Amberley, Sussex; a receiver for the duchy of Lancaster in London and the home counties who lived at Enfield, Middlesex, and who in 1585 petitioned the Queen for the relief of his poverty; a London Skinner of Staffordshire origin who died in 1592; and the John Taylor who sold property in the parish of St. Clement Danes, Middlesex, to William Paget, Lord Paget in May 1556.3

It was clearly at Paget’s nomination that Taylor was returned for Lichfield to the Parliament of April 1554. The first reference found to the connexion between them dates from the previous January, when Richard Cupper had recently repaid Taylor a sum of £4 owed to him by Paget. In December 1554 Taylor and his wife acquired from Paget the manor of Appleby Magna in Derbyshire and Leicestershire, and Caldon chapel in Staffordshire; Taylor afterwards leased from Paget other Staffordshire properties at Burton and Horninglow. Between 1555-6 and 1557-8 Taylor appears as bailiff of several of Paget’s manors in Staffordshire, and in March 1559 Paget wrote to Taylor as bailiff of his property at Burton. That the Member was this servant of Paget’s, and not a forbear of the Taylors found at Lichfield in the later 16th century, is all but proved by the absence of a John Taylor from the subsidy rolls for the city and by the fact that John Taylor of Burton had no son. An inquisition held on 2 Sept. 1569 found that he had died on 13 Nov. 1568 leaving a three-week-old daughter named Maud as heir to an estate valued at £6 a year. She was the child of his second marriage to the granddaughter of a prominent Staffordshire gentleman.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: A. D.K. Hawkyard

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. J. C. Wedgwood, Staffs. Parl. Hist. (Wm. Salt Arch. Soc.), i. 342-3; CPR, 1554-5, p. 135; C142/151/21.
  • 2. CPR, 1563-6, p. 30; 1569-72, p. 9.
  • 3. C193/32/1; LP Hen. VIII, xvi, xx; CPR, 1554-5, p. 255; 1555-7, pp. 32, 86; 1563-6, pp. 90, 118, 323; 1569-72, p. 270; Al. Cant. iv. 205; PCC 89 Harrington.
  • 4. Staffs. RO, D(W) A34/3/4/26(1); 1734/3/4/34; Paget mss 139/53 ex inf. C. J. Harrison; CPR, 1554-5, p. 135; C142/151/21.